Not passion's slave
by Coppers
Summary: "He left me out of lust," Horatio thinks, but he knows it isn't that at all. It's worse.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings: I cannot write; this is faux-Elizabethan drivel. Slash pairing. Angsty, passion's-slave Horatio.**

**"Wit" is a pun for male genitalia, "nothing" a pun for female (e.g. Much Ado About Nothing), and "hour" is a homophone for "whore". Obviously, I stole all these from Shakespeare. (It's not stealing! It's open license!)**

**This chapter is set before Act I of the play.**

I would fain believe he left me out of lust, but my soul is not one that abides by deception. Some men can lie away their lives, even to themselves, but not I; perhaps this someday will bequest me favor above, but in daily life it makes sin torment. As it should be. So let me dissect for thine benefit, luckless reader, this very false and very sinful idea.

He left me out of lust.

He left me not, for if he'd left he'd once have had me. He's had me not, o intimately interested reader. I apologize for that which follows, here; but thou doth not exist and there will be no reader of this page. This fault is mayhap mine, though he has the chance every night as I lie tormented, alone, in twisted wool. The window is open, is it not? I leave it open every night, no matter the chill, so that my visions of the prince may enter through it.

In the darkness, I make myself hear the creak of the castle as though it is an interloper climbing up to visit. I happily draw myself an intruder, his rye-colored hair disheveled and his face peaked but nonetheless alluring, his ornate nightclothes in disarray not fit for royalty. The fervor of his eyes is on me, as it never is in life. He is here for my death and I pine for it.

"How now, Horatio?" He whispers with urgent politeness. Perhaps he's seen a night-ghast and longs for my comfort. It is my only skill, but I am practiced at it and it has got me farther than I'd have else gotten in life. More oft, the castle is under siege. Our deaths are certain, imminent, and drawing ever closer. In these last moments, the rules of court have no bearing; our titles, names, and natures are irrelevant as a corpse's. He is free to be not a prince, but whatever man or woman he so chooses; I am free to be his. And death will set us free of consequence. Of course, if I were to voice these thoughts, death would sure be my consequence; and this no fancy, either.

My fantasm-Hamlet lulls me to sleep each night. No one but this parchment will ever witness this, so it is no matter in itself; what causes my distress is that each morning I wake, it takes longer to remember that it is a fantasy. I easily make a friendly glance into a lover's gaze, a simple greeting into a wanton declaration of love.

Horatio, attend: you ne'er were his.

Your world of wishes poisons that which is.

**-break-**

He left me out of lust.  
Hamlet lusts not for anything but books, certainly no lily-scented Ophelia. We have had this conversation twice, as young men are wont to do (that is - young men who are not I, for conversing like this with Hamlet is like being hunted by savages for me). The first time, at school, it went this way:

We have read a text concerning the nature of love, which included intimate implications veiled in a florist's metaphor, and in class discussed the lewdness of it. The consensus is that it is indecent but that it makes the argument on love all the stronger; the professor sighs as he expects this view from a group such as ourselves - well-off young men with too much leisure spent on whores. We, the group, think anything can be improved with the addition of indecency.

Hamlet digresses. He thinks it detracts from the author's greatest point; that intimacy has no place in writing. I form no opinion on the piece, for I know I am corrupt and thus abstain from this sort of discourse. But I play devil's advocate to the prince, and we continue our argument in many forms even into the evening.  
The debate transmutes itself several times, and eventually we get on to the accuracy of the floral metaphor.

"Think you the lily appropriate, as the author uses it?" He asks me.

"I know not," I admit, searching hopelessly for escape. "We've concluded the usage inappropriate."

"Yes, but the conceit." He pretends not to find me humorous.

"I still know not."

"Nor I."

He allows me to escape, then, to the woods where I may meander in painful solitude. I claim I must study; in fact I study my memory of our conversation. Certainly I make a paragraph of his quiet "Nor I", and then an essay and then a novel and then a bible so I may be an author, scholar, and priest of Hamlet. It is evil.

My heart is rotting like that sagging tree;

If it offered me a noose, I'd hang for thee.

**-break-**

Our second conversation on love is less valid as a source, for all that it is rather longer. He is drinking spirits; I am feigning the same but tossing it over my shoulder when his attention wavers. I know if I allow myself to drink near him, I will become senseless and forget myself. If he'd have it, to tipple with Hamlet would be to tumble with him, and that to cut Fortune's string ten knots too short. If he'd have it not, the same but quicker and with no recompense.

The tavern is loud and distracting; I am thankful. I thank God too that it is early in the night and we have got seats across a gaming table. Neither throws dice, but our backs are weary and we are grateful for the comfort. I, though, am grateful for that we cannot touch by chance in this arrangement.

"Good Horatio," he addresses me, "I'd have thought you with away within an hour. In its stead, you keep me company."

"Surely you jest, my lord," I banter senselessly. He will win this conversation shortly; I am burdened by additional commissions. He must only consider wit and meaning, while I deal on wit, meaning, self-censorship, and discovering increasingly more convoluted means to prevent my gaze from falling on him. I play that I find a game of dice behind him uncommonly absorbing. "If you think me to leave you drunk for an hour, you know me not."

"Perhaps more than one, then. I entertain you not in this state."

This is true. A tipsy Hamlet is a challenge on my restraint, and it wears on me. "Nay, my lord. I fear only for the foolishness you enact, for it will surely come back to the king, and he will have it slain within the hour."

"If the hour allows it."

"They are paid to allow, are they not?"

Hamlet's eyes glint with triumph, though he maintains his somber expression. I have lost track of the conceit and lost my footing; he means to mock my stumble. "Bring me the man who has paid the time o' day, if he can be found."

I manage to recover quickly. "I'll find for you a man who has paid the hour and several in his stead who have not."

He guffaws. It has not yet ceased to surprise me; he is delicate, fair-haired, refined, but he makes laughter as a broad-shouldered, hard-handed farmer mixed with a cackling crow. It grates delightfully on my ears. "Oh, Horatio. I'd fain drink your words over this spirit."

Halt, I pray, stop your thinking.

"And your spirit over your words. You are just and honest; you are the man among five who pays his hour properly." He is drunk, now, surely.

My chest fails to rise and fall; the very breath in my lungs is made into iron. But surely I am Hercules, for I manage to make them cough, "I've not."

"Not paid?"

"Not had reason to."

"What reason have you for this?" He swills another thimble of akavit, and I pray it will distract him. It does not, of course, because I am corrupt and Fortune has only begun to take aim at me for punishment. "Ah, you have a woman, Horatio. Wherefore have I not met her?"

If I had a woman, mayhap my rambling, caustic, clever prince would take the living daylights out of her within five minutes. Though if I had my choice of woman, she would be he himself and restore the daylight to my world. "Nay, my lord. I have none." Speech is not my friend tonight; I will shun it.

"Like you not the whorehouses, then?"

"Nay, my lord." I ought to make a plate of that for more easy use, I voice it so frequently.

"Nor I."

This, too, makes my heart quicken with surprise. The prince has all the material favors of man available to him: his garments are five times the cost of mine, his room the best to be found. He is deserving, of course, and the cost he pays is great. I chose to study, and from hence I may choose to teach or write or any such thing; his profession is his birth. But, nonetheless, I'd thought one of so much commercial power would have his choice of any whore. I like them not, tis true, but I am slave to Fortune's poor temper and her curse.

"Horatio, is it strange -" he begins, then halts, then starts again. He is the most measured drunk I know, to moderate a question like this; but then, his sober questions are not merely moderated but formulated, planned, charted, and peer reviewed before asked. "Nay, tis strange. Nothing interests me save my studies; and disregard my wit here. My fellows speak often of desire, yet I know it not."

I know it well. I fail to feign interest in the game of dice; my eyes fall upon Hamlet's flushed and anxious face, and I know it well. It is drink that colors his pale skin, but my heart longs to think it is I. I can feel his foot prodding mine for response, and hide it behind a table-leg. "It's not for me to say, my lord." Please allow me escape.  
"It is not for you, but I wish you to do it anyway, dear friend."

"'Zwounds, my prince! I know not!" My voice rises unbidden, and near heads turn to see the ruckus. Most like they long for a duel to break out.

"Soft now, I beg you," says the drunk and grinning prince. I long to make him hurt. "You forget yourself."

To conclude, Hamlet has confessed in me his deficiency of lust; therefore it is more like than not that Ophelia commands his heart and not his ardor, while I command neither. It would be small recompense if I could have one and she the other; perhaps I'd once thought I'd have the former. If I'd my choice, it would be the one I'd take; its lack plagues me constantly, while I intermittently forget the latter.

She has him now, at least in part, and she means to take the whole. I cannot assign her blame for this, for it is my life's only want. It makes my eyes cardinal red with weeping.

To lose a man for lust is bearable;

to lose him not, for love, is terrible.


	2. Chapter 2

**Set after Act II. I think this one sucks more than the previous.**

Dear unread parchment, may I pose thee a question? What does it mean to go mad?

The court thinks Hamlet does it now; I know him to be sane. Hamlet thinks he's done it properly; I know it to be poor craftmanship. The theory now is it is his love for Ophelia; but this titular madness has proven to me he loves her not.

I know what it is to be driven mad by love; Hamlet does not. I know what it is to pace barren walkways with a phantom of my love beside me, tormenting me with his insubstance. I know what it is to go to a wedding and see my prince's hand on mine on the knife that cuts through marzipan; and hence his hand on the knife that bleeds me dry. For to love him is to beg not only for death but damnation; and I love him still, and I once a passing good man. Thus I must be mad.

I first felt as Hamlet did; that my wont for lust was some trick that clever Nature had played upon me. It caused me some pain, which I judged a league, but now I've found it an inch. For a drought of desire is preferable to a torrent, and immeasurably better than a torrent misdirected. The fear of being swept away by it never leaves me; someday my dam will break and I will seal the fate I know now cruel Nature picked for me.

His act is poor - I must inform him.

But a clever informant must I be

to inform him not of my misery.

**-break-**

A story for thou, then, o patient parchment. Bear in thine mind (though thou hast one not, I suppose) all that follows is merely story, and I a master author.

"Your act is poor," say I, rehearsed.

"Of what act speak you?" He replies while shuffling papers. He will not meet my eye, and for that I praise God, for I know I need all my words about me. "I am mad with love for Ophelia."

"Nay, you have to me confessed your sanity. The poverty is in performance."

What follows is a haze within which the crown prince of Denmark confesses that he loves no woman, but me alone. Somehow it is true but wordless. His hair is fair and straight; it whispers through my dreams each night. I wrap my hands in it and make his mouth my own. Unspeakable things, even in this most private venue. Oh, I am damned! But

Corrupted prince, I care not whether

you and I go mad to Hell together.

**-break-**

Dearest paper, I forgot to whom I wrote. Yesterday I never closed my diary; in fact I never voiced my critiques to him. His madness is false, and getting falser by the day. Most like, it is my duty to voice my thoughts, but I cannot for fear of what follows in my mind. If I say "Your act is poor", rehearsed, no matter how Hamlet diverges from my script, I will eventually break and speak my love - or worse, show it, and take him to the rug with the terrible weight of it. Think what you may of me; but Tantalus would have his grapes in second if he could.

Let me next recount another tale of a happier time, another of university.

I was a boy then, educated in books only, when I met the prince. It was aptly in the library, a room of whispered secret knowledge that was like sunshine to me. I went to remove a story of Cleopatra from a stack of similar volumes, but found it would not budge.

"What ho!" I heard a chirping voice. "Who goes there?"

Around the stack appeared a boy my age, around fifteen, with birds-down blonde locks and a pinched face. His nose was high and thin, his lips a line, and his sky-colored eyes too large for his delicate face. I was surprised, and, moreover, shy in all manner of things, and stuttered, "Want thee the very same story as I? Take it if it is thy wish."

His eyes narrowed with surprise, perhaps affront. He moved to speak, then halted himself. On the second start, he was successful. "Nay, thou may'st take it. Surely 'tis thy right. Thou would'st surely have wrested it from me in further time."

We read it together in the sunlight of the library, acting out scenes and playing at being players. We were forcibly removed at five o' clock and took it back to my lodgings, and it was only two days later upon inquiring a third party that I discovered I had made a friend of Prince Hamlet. Upon reflection, it became clear that my familiar address had been the cause of his confused response. I had assumed he was just a fellow student; he played along.

I approached him on the green thereafter. "Why did you not correct my improper address, my lord Hamlet?"

He put away his book reluctantly as ever. "Stop this nonsense. Address me familiarly, I beg you; I won't stand for this _my lord._"

I made my face straight and said, "Yes, my lord."

"I jest not with you, sweet Horatio," he pleaded, and I felt my hands grow warm but knew not why. "Refrain you from this drivel I must fight each day: _thou, Your Majesty,_ _my lord. _It drives me mad."

"Yes, my lady." And that was the first time I heard his hair-raising bellow of a laugh I've missed so lately.

Innocence was easy, joyous, even. But it lasted less a year and we grew into men with all the weight of a kingdom on Hamlet's shoulders and all the weight of Hamlet on mine. We walked to classes together, and one day the distance between us became a living force and being, pulling me to him while I resisted on instinct. He pushed it aside effortlessly with an arm around my shoulder; to love publicly is easy when private love is simple friendship. But it never was, to me. This was the first of my love.

He spoke in discussions and I listened raptly, but later remembered only the bluebird eyes that mocked my attempt at attention. I spoke more rarely, but my thoughts were always well formulated and equally well received; Hamlet gambled on brilliance and somehow, more oft than not, stumbled upon it. It was not too hard to be a friend and just that, in the day, but night was difficult. Under starlight every eye looks lovestruck; it was worst when he drank and became affectionate - ran his hands through my hair and adjusted my tunic and eventually needed someone to lean upon as he made his way home. He was not regularly like this, but occasionally threw caution to the winds; he is and was so frail that drink made a fool of him almost immediately.

And thus I learned I was ill with want for my prince. And, oh, Hamlet, I _wanted _you. You cannot imagine, you God-blessed chaste soul; and initially I could not imagine, either, and could not explain my torment to myself. I knew not why I craved your hands. Do you remember that night, my Hamlet? It was winter and you were tipsy yet coherent. You stormed into my room, far too late, with tired eyes and a red-flushed face; you'd run up three flights of narrow stairs fervent with the need to tell me your philosophical breakthrough on law versus morality. And I mistook the scene. You sat by my bed with passion in your eyes and short breaths catching in your throat, and my heart so struck by Mab's cruel fingers that I mistook the scene for one that I had dreamed. I nearly pulled you down on top of me; only I thank God you moved away before I did it.

After you left, I made a poultice of the night air for my burning face and questioned my own intent. I wanted to lay with you, I realized, though I knew not even what that was. My virtues, of which I once thought I had an abundance, were off-tracked by instinct; if the law would have it I'd have married you the moment you burst through the door and had you the moment after. This was the first of the torture.

Wish thee to know the latest installment, silent sheet? It was only the other day upon the battlements.

"Thou art e'en as just a man as e'er my conversation coped withal," he said, and I thought it viscous to be phrased so.

_Speech, Horatio, _I cautioned myself, _He means speech. _But yet my face grew colorful, and the mistaken idea of the prince's knavish words made mincemeat of my heart. And aye, 'twould take blindness to not be aware of my affections, but then many men are blind even with working eyes. Can he know of my depravity? If so, his playing is barbaric, and I'd fain he have me executed. More likely it was Fortune's trickery, mere chance to have those words.

But, oh, Hamlet. Why must you continue such? Your soul chose me - nay, sealed me? I know you make light and airy things of words, but I beg you halt. Why say you wear me in your heart of hearts? This is madness. You will make a great king someday, if you may play the courtiers as you do me; but, nay, I must protest this thought. Find no other man nor woman to wear.

And you say I am not passion's slave

but I am yours and never to be saved.


End file.
